Refrigerator appliances generally include a cabinet that defines chilled chambers for receipt of food items for storage. One or more insulated, sealing doors are provided for selectively enclosing the chilled food storage chambers. Consumers generally prefer chilled chambers that facilitate visibility and accessibility of food items stored therein.
In order to facilitate visibility of food items stored therein, refrigerator appliances typically include a light positioned within the food storage chamber(s). A switch is typically provided to illuminate the light when the insulated sealing door or doors is/are opened.
In order to facilitate accessibility of food items stored therein, the cabinet of the refrigerator appliance may contain multiple food storage chambers provided to store items of different sizes and/or at different conditions. In such appliances, multiple doors may be provided. Multiple doors can be provided in side-by-side, top and bottom, inner and outer arrangements, or various combinations thereof.
When multiple doors are provided, a plurality of food storage chambers may be thereby created. For example, many typical refrigerators have only one fresh food storage chamber, whereas providing multiple doors can create distinct fresh food storage chambers. In such cases with multiple chambers, it can be difficult to provide adequate lighting for each chamber while also making the lighting responsive to opening any one of the multiple doors. Typically, refrigerator appliances may include a switch and associated wiring for each of the multiple doors to illuminate the light whenever any one of the doors is opened. However, providing multiple switches and accompanying wiring for each of the multiple doors can be difficult and costly.
Accordingly, a refrigerator having an improved means for selectively illuminating the light when any one of the multiple doors is open without separately wiring individual switches for each door would be useful.